Amazon: one size fits all…
This giant retailer has expanded so far beyond books that now books are only a small part of Bezo’s business. The company can no longer be considered a friend of readers and writers as a consequence.
Let’s start by listing some recent sins: they offer only one format for ebooks—theirs, of course. While they compensate for that by offering the Kindle app, available for most devices, readers with older ereaders can’t be too happy with the situation because the app isn’t universal.
In fact, Amazon has destroyed the competition as far as ereaders go. They’re putting a lot of print-on-demand companies out of business too with their Create Space print-book publishing option. Bookstores almost universally refuse to stock Create Space books for a multitude of reasons; that affects readers who might like to read an author’s book in a print version, and it obviously diminishes an author’s distribution options.
The borrowing option with Prime is potentially a source of income for authors, but they’d make more selling the entire ebook; even when a reader reads the full book, it’s a way for Amazon to pay writers fewer royalties. Another negative for authors is that to offer a book at a sale price on Amazon, the book must only be available on Amazon! That is detrimental for an author’s marketing options.
There are other pros and cons. One positive point is that Amazon is the largest retailer in the world. Unfortunately books are only a small part of that retail business now. And people can often find better deals at a mom&pop bookstore or even a B&N book barn, as well as other online book retailers like Smashwords. The latter retailer offers almost every ebook format, including Amazon’s .mobi. It also has affiliates, both retailers and book lenders. It allows authors a variety of marketing options, including special sales on ebooks. And it allows an author to set a lower price for public library purchasers. Best of all, it’s all about books, just like any bookstore in your neighborhood. Amazon fails to compete in most of these venues. In fact, in shuns them with despicable snobbery.
For once I agree with Douglas Preston. He’s rather famous for his on-going feud with indie authors, Barry Eisler and Joe Konrath, in particular, and his blatant rants in support of Big Five publishing conglomerates—forget those small presses, of course. But in his recent (Thursday, October 12) op-ed in the NY Times, “Publishing’s Unfair Gray Market,” his title is a wee bit misstated and certainly unexplained. “White market” refers to legit booksellers and distributors who do NOT scam the reading public; “black market” presumably refers to book piracy (see my previous article about that subject). “Gray market” refers to the ambivalent—perhaps legit but most certainly unethical.
Some of what Preston describes has been going on a long time, but a lot of what he says focuses on Amazon. The retailer has sneakily changed its book merchandising policy to match their policies for other products it sells, where third party vendors can actually compete with Amazon and sell used and returned items as new. Their review process has always treated books as products like shoes and hairdryers (I received one negative review from a person who mainly reviews women’s apparel!). Now they’ve gone too far. And you wonder why my books are no longer exclusive to Amazon and I only offer sales on Smashwords? Any author who’s exclusive to Amazon is shooting her- or himself in the foot!
In another article in the business section of that same Times’ edition, “The Rise and Stumbles of the Digital Giants,” much is made of the “Frightful Five”—Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Microsoft, and Alphabet (parent corporation of Google)—and how clueless they are when they delve into cultural industries. Well, book publishing is the “cultural industry” of all cultural industries, and Amazon continues to bite the hands of those who feed it, namely readers, writers, and publishers. Our only recourse is to minimize the damage where possible. Maybe Preston’s contribution (a rare positive one) to the discussion will receive some resonance.
We’ve just celebrated Indie Authors Day (a big shout-out and thank you to those who stopped by my booth at the Montclair Public Library). That day was a celebration of publishing for readers, writers, and small presses. All of us there weren’t thinking about Amazon explicitly, but we were also making the implicit statement that books aren’t just products on Amazon. The reading public, authors, and small presses deserve and belong in a more select category because they love books and recognize that books are an essential part of our culture and freedoms, not just a pair of sports socks.
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Rembrandt’s Angel (Penmore Press). How far would you go to recover a missing masterpiece? Have great fun this fall reading about the adventures of Scotland Yard’s Art and Antiques Inspector Esther Brookstone and her paramour/sidekick, Interpol agent Bastiann van Coevorden. Esther becomes obsessed with recovering Rembrandt’s “An Angel with Titus’ Features,” a painting stolen by the Nazis for Hitler’s museum. The crime-fighting duo goes after the painting and those currently possessing the painting, but the whole caper becomes much more dangerous as they uncover a conspiracy that threatens the security of Europe. With all the danger, their budding romance becomes full-blown. This book is available as an ebook on Amazon, Smashwords, Kobo, B&N, and Apple, and also as a print book from Amazon and your local bookstore (if they don’t have it, ask for them to order it). Check out the review and interview at Feathered Quill.
In libris libertas!
